Aprilis adds extra clarity to fingerprint ID security

A Maynard company is banking on holographic imaging to introduce a next-generation of powerful fingerprint scanners, with a potential market ranging from anti-terrorism to corporate background checks.

Aprilis Inc. unveiled three fingerprint scanners this week that replace silicon sensors with optical components. Aprilis claims that by bouncing light off the pad of a person's finger and focusing the reflection through a hologram, it can get incredibly precise images that will result in virtually flawless identification.

The 25-person company, founded by ex-Polaroid employees, originally wanted to explore holography for data storage, according to chief executive John Berg. Along the way, however, executives realized that many of the same tools for holographic storage could be applied to imaging "and you really could have much better performance" than with silicon-based imaging sensors.

The Aprilis sensors work by firing a beam of light against a person's finger as it is pressed against a glass surface. The finger absorbs some of the light, but the remainder reflects back through a hologram working as a lens. The light renders an image (captured by a small digital camera) that displays not only the ridges and valleys of a fingerprint but even individual skin pores and ridge aberrations.

Because Aprilis' sensors use light, they can last far longer than existing fingerprint sensors. Sensors based on silicon suffer small jolts of static electrical charge during repeated use, Berg said, and wear out more quickly.

Berg also played up the Aprilis sensors high resolution. Other vendors do have 1,000 dpi sensors on the market, he acknowledged, but they work only by examining four fingers at a time; Aprilis' sensors work with only a single finger. The company is also developing sensors with 2,000 and 4,000 dpi, he added.

With such high-end sensors, Aprilis is chasing a well-known market: Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS). The FBI developed the first AFIS system in the 1950s; today they are standard in law-enforcement agencies worldwide. Most systems today have Level 2 precision, meaning they can detect where ridges stop or bifurcate. Aprilis wants to seize the emerging Level 3 standard of measuring pores and deviations on the ridges themselves.

The FBI has been using a prototype 4,000-dpi fingerprint sensor for a full year, and the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab recently took delivery of an Aprilis system as well, Berg said.

Berg said the company is producing some sample units for customers now and expects to start shipping enough 500- and 1,000-dpi units by the end of this year for the business to break even. Higher-resolution units for 2,000- and 4,000-dpi images are still largely experimental and might not be widely available for another few years, he added.

The International Biometrics Group, based in New York, pegs the market for advanced AFIS equipment at $120 million by 2006. Kyoko Kaneda, a consultant with the group, conceded that Level 3 precision "has been more of a conception, and remains so at this point" while the market hashes out industry standards.

Still, Kaneda said, 1,000-dpi images "are a resolution that's currently not available from other competitors - Aprilis is very well-primed for the market," assuming it can navigate its customer base's transition from Level 2 to Level 3 during the next few years.

"It's an emerging market, to be sure, but it's a nice size," Berg said. He also hopes to tap into civilian markets such as the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service or the U.S. Customs Service, as well as military and corporate security users.